Using WordPress as an editor

WordPress is originally intended to be used for blog sites, but because of it’s popularity it is also used as a CMS (Content Management System) for any kind of regular web site. The power of WordPress lies in the fact that it’s easy to work with as an editor and web designer, but it’s also possible to develop plugins for WordPress if you fancy some programming. So it offers a lot of possibilities to everyone. Still, it’s pretty good to remember what using WordPress was originally intended for when you are working with it as an editor: blogging.

Blogs were usually personal stories, almost like public diary entries, published mainly for the purpose of sharing. Over the years blogs are used for anything. It’s almost become a way to describe an informal style of writing instead of what it used to stand for. You could use blogs to share professional discoveries like the top 10 do’s and don’ts in your field of expertise or you could use them to share your personal travels or food discoveries. Whatever holds your interest.

If you want to start a blog site and you want to be added to blog directories or join blog communities in order to meet other bloggers and get more exposure, then it’s best to choose one main subject to blog about. For instance, food. Blog directories will usually only allow one subject per domain name and they’ll review your full site in order to approve or disapprove your subscription. So if you want to blog about more non-related subjects (for instance food and your job as a high school teacher), you might want to think about setting those up as separate WordPress sites (and not set it up like I did mine).

Categories

All your blog posts to your WordPress site will, by default, end up on one great pile of blogs. Within WordPress you can create categories in the admin section of WordPress when you go to Posts > Categories. So suppose your main subject is food, you can now split your blogs into various categories, for instance: snacks, appetisers, mains, deserts, restaurants, special diets, wines… you get it. It will bring some order to the pile especially when you use a free plugin to sort the posts per category. Certain WordPress themes (designs) will publish a new category automatically to your site, but you can always hide them in the admin section (go to Appearance > Menus to remove the category from the menu). When you have the blog navigation links activated in WordPress you will see a link to the previous and next blog on each post. By default this will show the blogs in the order you posted them, ignoring the category you’ve assigned the post to.

Posts

Posts in Wordpress originally were intended for posting blogs, but perhaps you are using them differently on your web site. You can add Posts real easily (Posts > Add new) and once you’ve published them (possibly assigned to a category) they will become visible on your site right away. You can prevent this when you save them as a draft to be edited further later. You can also set the visibility (you can choose between Public, Password protected and Private) or you can set a publish date and time to your post. Using XML or RSS feeds you can let blog directories know pretty quickly you have written a new blog or published a new post and they can show it automatically on their web site. It’s a great way to draw traffic to your site.

Pages

It takes some getting used to, but it really does help to understand the difference between Pages and Posts. While Posts are really used to add a blog or news post to the web site, it’s normally assumed that you use Pages for any type of static information page that you want to add (like a page about who you are). New Pages (Pages > Add new) that you add won’t become visible in the navigation links. They are seen as something completely separate to the rest of the content. You can make them visible on your web site manually by adjusting the Menus: Appearance > Menus.